


ghosts that we knew

by dames_for_jamesbarnes



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Wings, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Suicide mention, Wings, no happy ending, this is not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 14:44:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19378837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dames_for_jamesbarnes/pseuds/dames_for_jamesbarnes
Summary: everyone is born with wings.what do you do when you lose the strength to use them?





	1. natasha

natasha’s wings are… white.

a shock to her, to anyone who knows her. how is the black widow one with wings as white as snow, no soot or stain daring to change the color. but they’re perfect, as pure as the sacrificial lambs of old.

she uses them, when she can. letting them fan out to attract her mark. the light can filter through them, she looks like an _angel_ (and no one’s original when they say it to her, asking when she fell from heaven, and she grins and plays along until they see how well she bites).

(angels don’t bite.)

she hates them. keeps them tight against her body. wishes she had wings dark as night, wings that showed just how fucked up she really is. but not even the red room can’t change that what’s in her genes. the same thing that makes her hair red is what makes her wings white.

red in her ledger. white on her back. they mock her in the mirror.

(a poor family, the snow freezing them. they were rich once. her mother’s hair, father’s beard, as red as her own. him, wandering out into the cold. never returning. her, dying in her sleep, as pale as the blanket that covers the city. and the girl vanishes. never returns.)

no one knows what happens to the family out by the tree line. one day they’re there. next they’re not, none except the mother, frozen to her sheets. so much for russian strength. the police don’t ask around. just the little boy in the village, who remembers the red of his friend’s hair, the puffy look of her wings. silenced by his mother, who takes him by the arm. they don’t look back as she hisses in his ear.

“отсутствует. маленькая девочка, которю больше никогда не увидишь. паук на ее месте.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "missing. the little girl, you never see again. spider in [her] place."


	2. steve

“you will never fly.”

steve punches a wall after that doctor’s appointment. ends up walking straight to his mother with tears streaming down his face, bucky offering the sheepish smile this time around as they thrust forward a broken wrist and three broken fingers for examination.

“you will never fly.”

his wings are so sparse, they look like someone plucked a chicken clean. pulled the feathers clean off, leaving nothing but the bones. no meat to be seen. pathetic. useless. the army won’t clear him based on the sight of him alone.  _maybe next time, kid. eat some more food, kid. go pick up some scrap, kid_.

“you will never fly. but if i can help it, of course, give you a chance to fly… what would you do with it?”

“i don’t like bullies. don’t care where they’re from. what their wings look like.”

the serum gives him wings. beautiful ones, too. they’re strong, deep, brown. look like they were made for a man ten feet taller than the little kid who punched walls and used trash cans as shields. he can fly now. it takes a while to learn, but he can do it. he does it well.

his wings work fine.

so why can’t he catch bucky when he falls from that  _fucking_  train?

his wings work fine.

but when he’s putting the ship in the water, he doesn’t use ‘em.


	3. bruce

he’s embarrassed about them, y’know.

they’re nothing graceful. by the time’s he’s two they look like they can engulf him. his father yells at him for it. screams that that he’s a freak. his mother cowers.

years later she’s gone, and bruce sees blood on his hands. his father’s blood is on the pavement.

if anything, they grow as he does. they fill rooms, the closets he hides in. so he keeps them wrapped up tight. keeps them pulled close around him, at night, when the shakes start. he never flies. never dares to lift his eyes above the ground he’s walking on. but he makes it. somehow. he can think for himself after all and does a hell of a job doing it.

liz laughs at his wings. like she gets the joke, the professor in his glasses with the wings meant for a professional athlete. her father laughs along. but for the first time, bruce laughs with them. because if it makes her smile, well. he’s willing to trip over a few feathers.

his wings fit around her. the room is full of them, and her laughter and the smell of the breakfast they’re cooking. she preens, straightens them out when they bend. the molt happens, and she helps pick up the pieces.

until she’s gone. and it’s all because of him.

the room is full of his feathers, the piles he leaves behind like further proof that she’s not coming back. harder to pick up with one set of hands, so he doesn’t. harder to fix the ones out of place when he can’t reach, so he refuses to. they fold against his back, and they never fill a room, because the only thing that deserves that honor is the way elizabeth ross smiled.

her father agrees.

how does a man with huge wings hide?

he runs.

(he flies.)


	4. thor

“the asgardians are a proud race,” odin tells them, and the authority makes their knees shake. even thor’s, as he stares at his father, at what he’s meant to be one day. “these wings, a gift from the gods. our strength, above all others in the universe. but we must be as strong with them as we are without.”

he can see it, even as a child. the coronation. beautiful women on his arms. loki by his side. he will be a good man. a great king. better than odin could ever be.

it is easy to practice. to pretend he holds the scepter, the crown on his head. to place bandages on his eye, tied behind his head, and boom his boys in an empty throne room. it is easy to see the future when that’s all you have ahead of you.

but soon he sees nothing else. sees nothing but the women that woo him and his friends that encourage him and his brother who envies him. he sees nothing else. mjolnir comes to him, and he feels it in every bone. he strikes down every enemy. what else does he need to tell him that he will be what he was always meant to be?

when they fight, he feels no wounds. he feels the wind in his hair, the chill of ice in his toes. watches giants fall, and challenges laufey where he sits above them.

a good king. he will be a good king.

“i was protecting our people!” he screams at his father, and he is a child again. his knees are shaking.

“you were protecting your pride!”

the world stops. the Bifrost splits open, and thor sees the rainbow, the crackling crystals. cold as jotunheim.

“i strip you of your power,” his father returns, and he sees not his father – he sees the odin of old. sees his fury, sees the pale horse he rides on. “i strip you of your wings. you do not deserve our ancestor’s gifts. you are a  _disgrace_.”

his wings are gone.

he is falling.

so much for a good king.


	5. clint

the day after his father dies, clint barton turns in some homework, smokes behind the bleachers, and gives one last smile to the kid in his french class before he disappears.

the bartons were a dirty name anyway – it wasn’t like them leaving didn’t do more good than trying to stay in the house on the corner. the damn thing is torn down once they’re gone, and the property value of the whole neighborhood goes up a few thousand bucks.

no one brings them up again. because if they think about it too long, then they become part of the problem. the murder-suicide of a couple on the corner, the bruises on the boys’ necks. the father that drank, the mother that smoked.

so they let the boys leave, in their father’s ratty coup that barely fit the younger one. he was growing so fast he was gangly, and his wings could barely keep up. the older has his jaw so tight it’s gonna snap, and it does when the younger drops a box and starts crying like he killed his mom himself.

(he thinks he did. he couldn’t hear her, he couldn’t hear her, and no matter how many times he says that his brother shuts him up soon enough.)

and then they’re gone. they leave the box on the sidewalk.

later, the whole neighborhood sees the sign. the circus is in town, and everyone gathers to take a peek. there’s not much else to do in the place anyway, besides cheer for some high school football.

they scream loudly for each performer. someone walks on his hands. the lions dazzle. and an archer does a stunt with his brother that has the whole crowd whooping. when he flies, they all stare. goes up to his perch until the end of the show. he’s a favorite with the kids, but leaves the adults puzzled.

they can’t connect the dots. the long limbs, the striped wings, the look in his eyes like shattered glass inside a cardboard box.

“how could they,” barney snorts into his beer, “if they never bothered looking in the first place?”


	6. tony

they’re delicate. so fragile they snap when he comes crying into the world. tony cries so loud that the doctors almost don’t seem them, the bright red plumage, the color that never dulls. and when they heal, he never puts them away, especially since that’s all his father wants him to do.

“put those damn things away,” howard says, and the anger that simmers in his tone ripples the whiskey in his glass. “you’re not a girl. you don’t fucking flaunt.”

his mother is quiet, staring at her plate. tony isn’t even sure what her wings look like. what his mother looks like when she lifts off the ground. she is stiff. unmoving. the stillest of life, if that’s even what hides behind her eyes.

tony refuses to be silenced by howard, and his forced vibrancy almost burns him out.

he drinks, he dances, he flies in the night sky. the amount of times he almost get shot, the frustration from rhodey and the eye rolls from pep. they hit a steel wall and fall to the ground. he is invincible. he’s a god among men.

howard can’t scream at him anymore. can’t tell him to put his wings away. the quiver of maria’s lip can’t haunt him. he is his own man, he tells the women, tells the men, tells rhodey, tells pepper. they kiss him to shut him up, they huff, they laugh.

he’s his own man.

the whiskey doesn’t answer.

the humvee blows. his wings are out, basically pressed against the sides of the car as he takes the picture with the soldiers. the feathers singe. red becomes black and becomes red again.

_put those damn things away._

oh, he could laugh if he didn’t cry first.

**Author's Note:**

> each character's wings were based off of a bird or creature i used for reference:   
> natasha - snowy egret  
> steve - golden eagle  
> bruce - great grey owl  
> thor - gryphon  
> clint - northern goshawk  
> tony - cardinal


End file.
